This lab study looked at immune cells from people with advanced head‑and‑neck cancer and found they had fewer IL‑2 receptors than healthy people. Adding the peptide thymosin‑alpha‑1 in the dish actually lowered the number of IL‑2‑receptor‑positive cells for a while, but by day four the levels were the same as before. The peptide’s effect wasn’t because it stopped cells from dividing.

Altered cellular immunity in patients with advanced head and neck cancer includes impairments in lymphokine production, blastogenesis, in vitro cytotoxicity, and T-cell levels. Recent evidence for the potential importance of in lymphokine interleukin 2 (IL-2) in patients with cancer prompted a study of the kinetics of IL-2 receptor expression on lymphocytes from patients with untreated advanced head and neck cancer and normal subjects and an evaluation of the in vitro effects of the T-cell immune-reconstituting peptide, thymosin alpha 1. Concanavalin A-stimulated IL-2 receptor expression was maximal after 72 hours and was higher in normal subjects than in patients. This was due to lower levels of helper/inducer (CD4) cells expressing IL-2 receptors in the patients compared with the normal subjects. Thymosin alpha 1 further decreased levels of IL-2 receptor-positive (both CD4 and CD8) cells at 48 and at 72 hours. At 96 hours, levels of IL-2 receptor-positive cells and proportions of cells in G2 and M phases of the cell cycle were similar among both groups of subjects. Simultaneous cell kinetic studies indicated that thymosin alpha 1 down regulation of IL-2 receptors was not due to an effect on proliferation and that differences in IL-2 receptor expression at 72 hours among normal subjects and the patients with cancer were more likely related to differences in cell proliferation kinetics.